Porter Police are
looking for the two men who scammed their way into an elderly couple’s house
on Monday, pretending to be utility workers.

The couple was not
harmed but the suspects did steal cash found in the woman’s purse.

The incident
occurred around 10:30 a.m. Monday, PPD Lt. John Lane told the Chesterton
Tribune today, as the couple, husband and wife, were sitting outside
their home on Beam Street. The two men, one of them wearing an orange safety
vest, were in a white full-size pickup truck with an amber light on top,
Lane said, and the couple assumed that they were both NIPSCO employees.

The suspects said
nothing to disabuse them of that supposition, in fact told the couple that
they might need to shut off the power to the home, and as one of them stayed
outside with the husband--confined to a wheelchair--the other went inside
with the wife, who was told to stay by the breaker box in the basement.
While she did so, the man went through the home, seeking valuables and
finding them, in the form of cash in the woman

’s
purse.

The suspects then
left the scene. The couple, meanwhile, was unaware that they’d been stolen
from until sometime later.

“Can you get any
lower than stealing from these people at this point in their life?” Lane
said.

Anyone with
information on this incident is urged to call the PPD at 926-7611.

Lane reminded
people that all employees of the region’

s
utilities--NIPSCO and Indiana-American Water Company, for example--are
properly credentialed and that folks should never hesitate to ask for
identification.